


the sandwich means “I love you”

by wordslinging



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5 Times, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Food, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordslinging/pseuds/wordslinging
Summary: Joseph and Nicolo linger near the door a moment longer, Joseph leaning in to steal a kiss, quick and sweet and a promise of more when they can snatch some privacy. Then he draws back, taking Nico’s hand.“Come on,” he says, intertwining their fingers. “Come sit down and have something to eat.”Or: Five times the Old Guard fed each other.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 46
Kudos: 619





	the sandwich means “I love you”

Andromache and Nicolo don’t make it to the first rendezvous point. 

This is an eventuality that’s been planned for, which is why there’s a second rendezvous point, a farmhouse deeper in the French countryside. It’s far from the first time they’ve had to resort to backup plans, but usually when that happens Yusuf—going by Joseph these days, and still getting used to it—is right by Nico’s side. Andy wants to be sure all of them can work well with the new one, so right now it’s her and Nico slipping past the front line of Bonaparte’s forces to achieve their goal while Joseph and Sebastien help them out with a diversion and then do a lot of waiting.

Last time it was Joseph and Andy in the thick of it, making sure critical information reached Wellington safely while Nicolo and Sebastien covered them from higher ground. Which Joseph got sore about, because watching Nico’s back while his focus narrows to what he can see through his rifle’s sights is _his_ job, thank you very much. He realizes that reaction is exactly why Andy is doing this--it's been just the three of them since they lost Quynh, and they've all sunk too deeply into the familiar habits and patterns that's created--but still.

“They’ll be fine, right?” Sebastien says as they shoulder their packs and move out, and when Joseph doesn’t answer right away, “Right?”

Logically, the answer is yes, Andromache the Scythian and Nicolo di Genova have carved their way through entire armies before and are perfectly capable of doing so again. Whatever's delayed them, there's no reason to think it will be anything but a temporary annoyance.

Joseph has never been overburdened by logic where Nicolo was concerned, and doesn't intend to start now. 

They make it to the farmhouse without incident and Sebastien does a quick perimeter check while Joseph starts a small fire in the hearth and takes stock of supplies. By the time Sebastien joins him in the kitchen, he’s assembled a meager meal of stale bread, hard cheese, and some leathery strips of dried meat.

Sebastien glances at the food with no enthusiasm, instead rummaging in his pack for the little silver flask he carries like a talisman. “It still seems like bullshit to me that we still have to eat.”

Joseph pushes a plate toward him. “Trust me, starving to death and then coming back will seem like worse bullshit.”

Sebastien concedes the point with a grunt, picking at the food in front of him. “Has that happened to you?” he asks.

Joseph nods around a mouthful of his own unappetizing meal, saying after he swallows, “A few times. The last was Estonia in 1696. There was famine there, and we were eating the bare minimum it took to keep us going, passing on whatever other food we could get our hands on to those who needed it more.” 

He can still remember the pinched, hollow faces of the children they’d given their last meager rations to, he and Nico and Andy all exchanging silent glances that said yes, this was worth it, that even if these same children were dead a week from now, they couldn’t walk away without doing all they could for them now. One little girl had grabbed Joseph’s hand and kissed the back of it as he handed her the last of his bread, and he’d held that in his mind as the three of them went off to find a sufficiently hidden place to die and revive.

“What’s it feel like?” Sebastien asks now, shrewd blue eyes regarding him across the table.

“Awful,” Joseph tells him simply. “Your body heals enough to keep itself alive, but that doesn’t stop you feeling weak, _empty_ inside. When you heal from a bullet or a stab wound, it’s usually too quick for you to really dwell on the how of it, but something like starvation? It flies in the face of everything you know of natural law, that your body should be able to keep going with nothing inside it. You can either keep moving until you find something to eat, or lie down and wait to die again, and either choice seems impossible.”

“Hanging was something like that,” Sebastien says, looking down. “I had no idea what was happening to me, just that I kept waking up with the noose still around my neck, and somehow I had to find the strength to free myself if I didn’t want to just hang there forever.”

Joseph grimaces in sympathy. He’s endured his share of strangulation, but never hanging, at least.

They sit quietly after that, finishing their meal. Joseph doesn’t bother trying to keep his eyes from the door, his head from turning at every sound from outside.

“You always worry this much when the group is split up?” Sebastien asks after a while. 

“If Nico’s not here?” Joseph replies without shame. “Always.”

Sebastien nods, mulling that over. "You two are…"

"Lovers?" Joseph suggests when he trails off; that word doesn't begin to encapsulate what Nicolo is to him, but it's the one people most often reach for in describing them.

Sebastien surprises him a little, shaking his head. "No. Or, yes, but not _just_ that. I've seen my share of men turning to each other for comfort or pleasure. You two are more than that. You look at each other like--" he breaks off, brows contracting sharply as he looks down. "Like my wife and I used to."

Joseph watches Sebastien's face as he asks, calmly, "Does that bother you?"

It was a possibility they'd had to consider when they set out to find him, the first unknown factor being introduced to the group in centuries. It hadn't been a stumbling block--they were all clear that if there was a new immortal, they needed to find him, and if he turned out to have bad opinions, well, they were just going to have to lovingly bully it out of him.

Sebastien lifts his hands, palms out. "Perhaps when I was young and stupid it might have. I've seen enough of the ways men hate in this world; anyone who chooses to quarrel with the ways they love has their priorities wrong."

Joseph nods, filing that away under one less thing to worry about. Then he says, "What do you mean, when you _were_ young and stupid?" and laughs at the obscene gesture that earns him.

Moments later, a faint noise outside makes them both sit up and look toward the door. Their hands go to their pistols, ready to draw, and then the door swings open on two familiar shapes, filthy and bloodied but very much intact.

Joseph goes straight to Nicolo, tension in his chest easing when Nico lifts a hand to cup the back of his neck and bring their foreheads together. Nico’s hair is wet and there’s a streak of mud drying high on his cheek and he smells of blood and sweat and gunpowder. Joseph _aches_ to kiss him.

“I’m fine too, thanks,” Andy says as she shuts the door, and Joseph reaches out to squeeze her arm without looking away from Nico.

“What happened to you two?” Sebastien asks, and Andy throws herself into the chair beside him and gestures at his flask. 

“Tell you if you give me some of that.”

Joseph and Nicolo linger near the door a moment longer, Joseph leaning in to steal a kiss, quick and sweet and a promise of more when they can snatch some privacy. Then he draws back, taking Nico’s hand.

“Come on,” he says, intertwining their fingers. “Come sit down and have something to eat.”

***

After Jean-Pierre’s death, Sebastien spends the next several years in a haze of alcohol. It’s harder for their kind to get drunk, but not impossible if you’re determined, and he is very determined.

The others give him time, and space. They check in occasionally, but let him distance himself. They tell him when they’re heading out on a job and when they get back. They let him know, in a variety of ways, that when he’s ready to come back, they’re ready to welcome him.

Sebastien doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready. He doesn’t know how to make his way out of the hole he’s been in since those last terrible days at the hospital. He’s sinking, and he can’t even drown.

It’s the dawn of a new decade when Andy shows up in his squalid little flat. 

“You here to tell me again how it was a bad idea to try and stay in my boys’ lives?” Sebastien asks when he walks in to find her sitting on his threadbare sofa.

“No, I’m here to drink your shitty booze and tell you to come back to work,” Andy informs him, punctuating the statement with a long pull from the neck of the bottle she’s holding.

Sebastien slumps against the wall near the door, because anything else seems like too much effort. “Why?”

“Why not?” she counters, and gestures around at the flat. “You got a lot else going on these days.”

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want to do this right now, Andy.”

“Fine.” She stands, walking toward him with a set to her shoulders that he knows well. “Throw me out, then.”

“I don’t want to fight, either,” he says. It’s a lie. He wants to fight everyone and everything. From the way Andy’s putting herself, the most indestructible thing either of them knows, right in front of him, he knows she can tell.

She gets right in his face, so close he can feel her breath. "You've had time, Book. You can have more if you can look me in the eye and tell me living like this is doing you a scrap of good. But I'm not going anywhere until that happens, or until you make me."

As if he can make her do anything. "You really want to pick a fight with a sad drunk?"

"I want to see if the sad drunk still has the soldier who had my back at Waterloo somewhere inside him," she replies. "Or am I wasting my--"

Sebastien's first punch is wild and clumsy, beyond easy for Andy to dodge. He follows it by rushing forward to catch her around the middle, not missing the satisfied grin on her face as they crash to the ground.

Five minutes later, they're sprawled side-by-side among broken glass and the splinters of the only nice chair in the whole flat, both breathing hard. Andy wipes away the blood from an already-healed split lip and Sebastien watches the bruises on his knuckles fade to nothing. He feels more alive than he has in years, and damn annoyed about it.

"You hungry?" he asks, and when Andy casts a dubious glance towards his tiny kitchen, "There's a bistro on the corner that's not bad."

"I didn't bring any money," she says as she helps him to his feet.

Sebastien waves a hand. "I may be a sad, drunken bastard, but I can still treat a friend to dinner." The notes in his pocket are mostly counterfeit, but nobody needs to know that. 

They don’t revisit the topic of why Andy came here until they’ve demolished their dinner and most of a bottle of wine. 

“Where are Joe and Nico?” Sebastien asks. 

“Nico’s on supplies and Joe’s working on securing passage,” Andy says, adding with a significant look, “I told them to plan for four if they could.”

“Andy…” Sebastien sighs, then gives in enough to ask, “Passage to where?”

“North America,” she replies. “United States. You been keeping up with what’s happening there?”

He nods grimly. “Civil wars are ugly, I don’t have to tell you that.” 

He really doesn’t; when he joined the group, a scant few years after his first death, it was while Napoleon was doing his best to tear France to pieces rather than cede control of it. The only real reason Sebastien gave a shit then was because France happened to be where his family still lived.

“And some things are worth getting involved in ugly wars for; I don’t have to tell _you_ that.”

It’s not something they talk about a lot, but Andy’s lived through the rise and fall of cultures where slavery was as common as breathing, where it was seen as the will of the gods or the natural order or whatever the popular justification of the time was. She’s had centuries to see what slavery does to people, and what they’ll endure in order to be free of it. If it takes a civil war for America to finally shake that particular devil off, so be it.

Still, Sebastien avoids her gaze, refilling his wine glass. “If appealing to my better nature was the plan, you should have sent Nico.”

“If that was the plan, I would have.” She leans forward, closing her hand around his wrist so he’ll look at her. “Sebastien, I understand what you’re going through.” 

He opens his mouth to object, and she cuts him off. “No, I never lost a child, let alone three of them. But you should have seen me after we lost Quynh. I spent whole decades at the bottom of a bottle or in the back room of an opium den. I’d scream at Yusuf and Nicolo to leave me alone, say I couldn’t even look at them when they still had each other, and then I’d flip from that to refusing to let them out of my sight because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing them, too.”

“How’d you come back from that?” Sebastien asks. He doesn’t recognize the woman she’s describing; Andy still carries the grief and guilt of losing Quynh with her, but she’s borne it with grace and strength for as long as he’s known her.

“I haven’t,” she replies. “Not entirely. I’ll never get back the person I was before I lost her. But eventually, I figured out that I didn’t have to stay the person I was right after, either.” She sits back in her chair and folds her arms, looking him square in the face. “The work doesn’t make it go away. But it helps. Gives you something to focus on, something to turn your pain toward instead of just trying to destroy yourself.”

Sebastien swallows hard, glancing at her and then away. “I’m not as strong as you are,” he confesses quietly. 

Andy stands, puts a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not weak either, Book.” 

Without waiting for a reply, she places a calling card with an address scrawled on it on the table in front of him. 

“We’re leaving in three days,” she says, and squeezes his shoulder before moving away. “Think about it. And thanks for dinner.”

***

Almost the first words Nicky exchanges with Nile are to ask about her food preferences. 

He’s been taking stock of their supplies in the Goussainville safe house while they wait for Andy to show up with the new immortal, making a list of dinner options, and he doesn’t want to bombard Nile with questions right away but he also doesn’t want her first meal with them to include anything she’s morally or medically opposed to eating (allergies are admittedly a lesser concern for them, but Nicky imagines it wouldn’t be pleasant to eat something that makes your body go into anaphylactic shock even _if_ you recover from it quickly). She blinks at his questions, regards him with the familiar look of a soldier assessing an unknown quantity, and then discloses a shellfish allergy and a personal dislike of onions.

He doesn’t get a chance to put together a proper welcome dinner for her until after Merrick, after Booker’s exile and after Copley accepts Andy’s charge to scrub any evidence of their time in the lab while they lie low for a while. Planning a dinner for all of them—a _real_ dinner, not just “here, sit down and eat this before you go out and get shot again”—is always a complex operation of balancing everyone’s likes and dislikes. Nicky prides himself on keeping it all in his head: that Andy will eat anything you put in front of her, often without even asking what it is, but also she’s yours forever if you feed her desserts, that Joe has that thing that makes cilantro taste like soap (though for a long time they had no concept of the genetic component to that, just “Nicolo, if you try to feed me that devil’s herb again, I swear—“), that Booker went through a vegetarian phase that didn’t stick and still eats less meat than the rest of them, and now, that Nile’s problem with onions is their texture when cooked, so onion powder for flavor is still an option.

It hits Nicky halfway through his grocery run that he’s still including Booker in the equation. 

It hurts, of course it does, to be putting together a family dinner without him. It also hurts to remember Andy’s defeated look as she was strapped to a table, the sound of a letter opener plunging into Joe’s back, and the feeling of having tissue samples taken while his body stubbornly fought the process every step of the way. Nicky puts it out of his mind and goes to look at the wine options.

Their current safe house has an actual nice kitchen, which Nicky spends hours in that afternoon. Not alone—there’s Joe stopping by to chat and steal a kiss or a taste of sauce, Andy making sure he has everything he needs and inquiring about dessert with the intensity of a general inspecting battle plans, and Nile hovering around trying valiantly to chop or stir something because her mother didn’t raise her to not help, only to be firmly sent away because one of Nicky’s few hard and fast rules in the kitchen is you don’t help prepare a meal that’s in your honor.

“I just feel bad that he’s doing all the work in there,” she says as Joe shepherds her out the third time. 

“Trust me, if he wants help he’ll let us know,” Joe tells her. “This is basically therapy for him, kid, let him have it.”

Nicolo first learned to cook in the monastery where he was educated and trained for the priesthood, for given values of “learned to cook” that meant he learned not to burn the bread or under-salt the meat. Even then, feeding the men he called his brothers brought a satisfaction that he hadn’t expected but wasn’t surprised by. The same way it wasn’t surprising, back then, that his favorite part of being a priest was when he got the opportunity to give Communion. The same way it’s not surprising now that he takes pride in cooking well-rounded, nourishing meals even though their only technical requirement for food is that it gives them calories to burn, in always greeting Andy with some sort of pastry when they’ve been apart for a while, in knowing exactly which centuries-old dishes to make when he senses Joe is in need of comfort food.

He keeps Nile’s tastes front and center for this meal, but avoids anything likely to evoke an emotional reaction. Someday, if she’s amenable, he’ll ask her to describe her mother’s baked macaroni and cheese in more detail and take a shot at recreating it for her. For now, the goal is to make her feel welcome, not homesick.

The whole house smells delicious by the time everything’s ready, and Nile finally gets to help out as she and Joe set the table. They’ve unearthed a table runner and placemats from somewhere, because “if we’re gonna be fancy, let’s be fancy”. Andy fills glasses with wine (Joe and Nicky), iced tea (Nile), or vodka (herself) as Nicky carries serving bowls to the table, and for a bittersweet moment it feels like this is actually their home, a place they live instead of just the place they’re living. 

Andy’s reaching for the bread basket and Nicky’s about to pass the salad bowl around when Nile clears her throat softly. 

“You guys mind if I say grace before we start? Just for myself,” she adds with a glance at Andy, who rolls her eyes a little but settles back in her chair with a “by all means” gesture.

“I’ll join you,” Nicky offers, placing a hand palm-up on the table between them, and Nile gives him a quick, bright smile like she wasn’t expecting that as she takes it.

She crosses herself with her free hand and bows her head, and Nicky sees her lips moving in the familiar _Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts—_. For his part, he doesn’t reach for any formal prayer, but looks from her, to Andy, to Joe sitting right across from him with a warm smile. 

_Thank you,_ he thinks, to whoever or whatever might be listening. _Thank you for my love, and for our family. Thank you for giving us a purpose to turn our long lives toward and the chance to do so together._

“Amen,” Nile says, finishing her own prayer, and Nicky echoes it as their hands part. 

“Can we eat now?” Andy asks. 

“ _Si, avanti_ ,” Nicky says, gesturing to the spread, and they dig in.

***

They eat dinner together more nights than not, whether that means cooking or takeout or just everyone scrounging in the pantry or fridge for whatever appeals to them but doing it at roughly the same time. Breakfast is another story. Nile, a habitual early riser, is happiest with peace and quiet while she drinks coffee and scrolls through news on her phone. Nicky and Joe like to lie in together as often as they can, and so usually one of them will emerge, grab something to eat, and disappear back into their room with it. Andy’s frequently not even around in the morning, whether that means she got up to go somewhere early or stayed out late the night before.

So when Nile heads out to the kitchen that morning and starts the coffee, she has no intention of making breakfast for everyone. She’s not in the mood for cereal, toast, or the rapidly over-ripening bananas in the fruit bowl, so she hunts around for something else and finds a box of pancake mix in the pantry.

And, well, you can’t make pancakes for just yourself when there are other people in the house who are gonna wake up to the smell of pancakes cooking. That’s been a rule of life since Nile’s childhood, and she sees no reason to depart from it now.

The siren call of butter sizzling in a pan does its work, and by the time Nile's flipping the first few pancakes Nicky emerges, hair sticking up every which way and worn flannel pajama pants that are probably older than Nile sitting low on his hips. He wordlessly starts getting plates out of the cupboard, and when the first batch is done he's got a plate waiting for her to slide them onto.

Joe's next, still sleepy-eyed and yawning as he walks into the kitchen. He plasters himself to Nicky's back and stays there until Nicky tells him to make himself useful and go get butter and syrup from the fridge. 

“This is great,” Joe says as Nile brings the pancakes to the table. “Thanks, kid.”

Historically, Nile doesn’t respond well to “kid”. She’s dealt with her share of folks who look for reasons to not take a young black woman seriously, and accepting patronizing nicknames from people only makes that worse.

It doesn’t bother her from Joe, she finds. Partly because he somehow makes it sound not the least bit patronizing, and partly it’s undeniably true—a century from now, she’ll probably still feel like a kid compared to the older immortals.

Andy shows up just as they’re all digging in, making a beeline for the coffee with her jacket and shades still on. She pours herself a mug, takes a big gulp without waiting for it to cool at all, and only then turns to see the rest of them gathered around the table. 

“We doing breakfast now?” she asks with a raised eyebrow. 

“We are today,” Nicky informs her, and pats the empty chair next to him in invitation. “Nile’s idea.”

Andy looks over at Nile. It’s a strange, weighty thing to feel centuries of comfortable habit rearranging themselves to make room for you.

She shrugs. "Don't go expecting this sort of thing every morning," she says. "But once in a while, yeah, could be nice."

Andy seems to mull that over for a second, then nods, finally taking off her shades as she joins them at the table. 

“You save me some?” she asks.

“‘Course we did, boss,” Joe says, sliding a plate toward her.

***

Andy doesn't cook.

That's been the rule as long as any of them can remember. She's never clarified whether that means "can't" or "doesn't want to", but really, to live as long as she has without ever learning to cook makes a pretty clear statement about her willingness. It's not that she won't pull her own weight when it comes to keeping them all fed--she'll shop or scavenge or steal, and never let a soldier under her command go hungry if she can help it. That said, she often doesn't see the point of getting particular about what you eat or how it's been prepared when literally anything the body can derive energy from will do the job. 

There's always been a firm line in Andy's mind between food for pleasure, and food as fuel. Sure, she can linger over the sensual delights of a piece of baklava--as well as identifying its provenance with unerring precision--but when they're working, she'll bolt down weevil-ridden hard tack or raw turnips snatched from a farmer's field or stale, artificially sweet protein bars with the same equanimity. You find something to eat. You eat it. Done.

Now that she’s mortal, she supposes she ought to start worrying about things like nutrition and food groups and not drinking her no-longer-self-healing liver into oblivion, which is _so_ damn annoying. Still, between Nicky's willingness to cook and the truly dizzying range of modern takeout options, she’s not planning on attempting cooking anytime soon.

On their first real job after Merrick, after Booker, Joe goes off the side of a boat just after taking a headshot and they all lose their minds a little. Andy swears she feels it happen, some latent trace of the connection that makes them dream each other now sending the same staticky burst of panic through all of them. 

It's not like Quynh--not anything like her, really. Joe's not alone when it happens, and he's not restrained, and they're roughly fifty miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, not the middle of the goddamn Atlantic. But he goes into the water dead, and he hasn't come up by the time Nicky fights his way to the railing and dives after him. Andy and Nile stay on deck, finishing up--the guy who shot Joe was their last real problem, and Andy puts him down with only a mild qualm about not saving him for Nicky--and then stand back-to-back, alternately scanning the length of the boat for signs of anyone they missed and watching the water's choppy surface.

"Joe's gonna be fine," Nile says, calm and steady.

"Of course he is," Andy snaps back, harsher than she means to.

Tense silence for a moment, and then they burst up to the surface, Nicky gasping in huge lungfuls of air and holding a coughing, spluttering Joe to him with one arm. Nile reaches down to clasp Nicky’s forearm when he’s close enough, and Andy leans forward to grab the back of Joe’s tactical vest, helping pull him up. And then all four of them are in a wet heap on the deck, Joe vomiting saltwater over the side while Nicky rubs his back and strokes his hair and murmurs reassurance in three languages. It’s one of those moments where it feels like you shouldn’t look at the two of them, so Andy looks out over the water and pretends she can’t feel Nile looking at her.

When they get back to the beach house where they’re staying, Nicky and Joe instantly disappear into their room for dry clothes (and, if Andy knows them at all, probably some quick comfort sex). Nile goes to call Copley, let him know the job’s done and put him to work making sure they left no loose ends. 

That leaves Andy standing in the main room by herself. Andy who lost Quynh while Nicky was able to get Joe back tonight, Andy who, if it had been her to take that shot tonight, wouldn’t have come back from it, Andy who loves these three people much more than her own life but if any of them comes back in this room and looks at her with well-meaning pity in their eyes, she’s going to break something.

She stalks into the little kitchen area, separated from the rest of the room by a counter-topped half wall. There’s bread there, and peanut butter, and Andy doesn’t cook but she can handle sandwiches, and has a plate of them ready when the others emerge.

“Here,” she says, pushing the plate across the counter, and then “You make one joke about me being the team mom and I’m putting you back in the Gulf, al-Kaysani.”

Joe mimes zipping his lips, and the amused sparkle in his eyes fades to something softer as he says, “Thanks, boss.”

They carry the plate over to the coffee table in the middle of the room. Nicky and Joe sit close together on the sofa, Joe looking no worse for wear, Nicky still a little wild-eyed and clingy—they’re always gonna take each other’s hits harder than their own. Nile grabs a sandwich and perches at the other end of the sofa, giving Joe an affectionate shoulder punch and a “Glad you’re okay”. 

Andy stays where she is for a moment, hands braced on the counter as she surveys her team. “Everybody good?” 

Joe folds a hand over Nicky’s where it’s gripping his knee, glances at Nile, then at Andy, nodding. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Good,” Andy replies, and moves to join them.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from [this Captain Awkward post](https://captainawkward.com/2012/02/13/190-the-sandwich-means-i-love-you-a-valentine/), because that phrase has been lodged in my brain as a perfect encapsulation of food as an expression of caretaking ever since I first read it. 
> 
> This started, unsurprisingly, with Nicky's section, but it didn't quite feel like a story on its own, and when I started thinking about how to expand it I quickly realized it needed a section for each of them, with Nicky's at the heart of it. Booker's gave me the most trouble, as it was my first time writing his POV and y'all, Booker is...a very sad man. 
> 
> Things that did not make it into this story but I still amused myself with during the writing process: a scene in the olden times where Nicolo offers to cook for everyone and Andromache's like "nah it's cool I've got this one" and just hands him a raw turnip to munch on.


End file.
